


les enfants qui s’aiment

by prettylilbrownskingyal



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, M/M, Not Beta Read, Zuko-centric, mostly a generous ramble about the sea and love and feelings, thinking of that quote that goes “its who you can sit in the water with”, yeah that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 09:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24847450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettylilbrownskingyal/pseuds/prettylilbrownskingyal
Summary: When Zuko was little, he was enamored by the sea. A place unlike any other he’d seen. One where sand and ocean met in harmony, a give and take in an endless, transcendental symphony— two opposites touching with no repulsion.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Lu Ten & Zuko, Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 204





	les enfants qui s’aiment

**Author's Note:**

> 😔👉🏽👈🏽 i don’t know what i did here but uhh you can clown me if you want on Tumblr 
> 
> [@prettylilbrownskingyal](https://prettylittlebrownskingyal.tumblr.com/)

When Zuko was little, he was enamored by the sea. A place unlike any other he’d seen. One where sand and ocean met in harmony, a give and take in an endless, transcendental symphony— two opposites touching with no repulsion. 

He remembers thinking it was  _ pretty _ . 

And then he nearly drowns in gallant waves trying to save both a turtle-crab and a hawk. He cannot recall his father’s arms around him, pulling him to the safety of the Ember Island shore. He can recall his mother holding him close, her heartbeat under his ear, her warm voice sheltering him.

“The sea hates me!” he cried, full of anguish. Heartbroken in an achingly infantile way.

“No, my love.” She soothed a hand across his trembling shoulders. “The sea was only doing what it knows to. You were just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. The sea could never hate you.”

He finds that, more often than not, he stands in the wrong place at the wrong time. And as he grows under the fuelling rays of the sun, something inside him shrivels and rots. His father is only doing what he knows to, he convinces himself. He’s doing what he has to. His father could never hate him, surely. 

When he’s a little bit older, armed with the title of big brother, Lu Ten takes him to the shore and teaches him how to swim. Not the basics he’d been taught by trained instructors, no. His cousin was teaching him the secrets of the tide.

“Don’t fight it,” Lu Ten says. He’s tall and strong and his voice sounds more and more like Uncle’s each day. “If you fight, the sea will fight back and it will do its best to extinguish your flame.”

“What do I do?”

“Use the power that surrounds you. Let it pull you in and push you out. Give and take.”

Lu Ten speaks in metaphors like Uncle too. 

Sometimes just to mess with Zuko.

His cousin laughs at the pinched expression on his face and wades them both deeper into the ocean’s arms. “Thread the waters, little firecracker. Don’t drown.”

That was straightforward enough. That was easy enough. All he had to do to survive was to ensure he wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time and do his best not to drown. He could do that. 

And then he’s thirteen. Barely holding himself together. Each time his father’s hands close around his throat, he feels like he’s being punished by the tides. Zuko tries his best to stay in the shallow, to avoid being in the wrong places, to keep from drowning. Each time he fails. 

He loses his honor in front of the entire court. 

He goes under. 

He’s thirteen and powerful and angry. Forced to pack himself into the hull of a dark ship full of marines tasked with the impossible. They do their best with the orders they’re given. Zuko feels like he’s floundering, still.

_ Find the Avatar and then go home.  _

That’s all it will take. He can do it. He’s sure he will. 

Uncle doesn’t treat him the way the nobles at court did on his last few days in Caldera city. He doesn’t look down upon the banished Prince who brought shame to his father’s name. Yet, he doesn’t push Zuko with the steady hand expected from the Dragon of the West, a formidable soldier. 

He’s different and Zuko can’t tell why. 

The day they first lay eyes on the Avatar he feels like his heart could explode. They’re so close, so close to home he can almost smell the salt and ash of the earth.

He plans, locates, evades and fails. He tries again. Picking himself up each time he falls even though he’d much rather fling himself into a whirlpool than keep going. Sometimes the rock of the waves and the creak of his ship feels like a threat as they travel from shore to shore. Sometimes it’s the only comfort he has.

When he’s a lot older than the curious child that fell into the crashing waves, he realizes that it never really was about where he placed himself or how hard he tried to thread the waters. His father was never going to save him again. Ozai would much rather watch him drown.

He holds the weight of his failures on his chest, shoulders his mistakes and lays his cards bare to the Avatar and his friends. He’s been fighting the current for too long and the sea has been fighting back. No more of that, he resolves.

“ _Hello, Zuko here_.” 

And he isn’t graceful like Lu Ten might have been. He’s not as precise as Azula or as strong as Uncle. But he tries. He stumbles through the motions until he’s finally threading the water. 

He works to earn their trust. It's tough. Terrifying and painful, and still, for the first time in his life his head is above the water and he’s breathing.

It’s rewarding too, earning their friendship. He learns things about each of them that he would have never known and with that, he finds pieces of himself he’d chipped away. 

Just as he’s finally got a hang of it though, the sea rushes forward with another riptide. This one is different. He knows how to manipulate his body to stay out of harm's way but he finds himself swimming directly into the thick of it. 

They’re just at the cusp of escaping Boiling Rock, a mission so close to success. He’s full of pride and adrenaline and horror at the sight of Azula. 

And suddenly, Sokka is grabbing onto his arms to pull him into the moving gondola and Zuko can’t help but remember when this same boy hit him in the face with Aang’s glider and shoved him off his own ship. It was a lifetime ago out there in the ice and if he’d noticed then, he never really let himself linger on it. But it clocks in just as he’s managed safety in Sokka’s arms.

Katara’s eyes are the ice of glaciers that surround the South Pole (at least, this is what Aang says). But Sokka— his eyes are the blue of the sea, shifting waves alive around his pupils. Every shade of the ocean from tepid waters to frosty storms, all moon kissed and alive, alive, alive. 

He doesn’t know what to do with this information now that he’s found it. So he does what he knows to with the things he wants but can’t have. He buries it within himself and keeps swimming.

Agni graces them with victory.

Aang defeats his father in his own special way. 

He saves Katara from his sister’s wrath because they’re friends now and he somehow has managed to fall a little in love with her brother. And with the way she smiles at him as the taste of victory begins to trickle in, he knows it’s all been worth it. 

When Zuko isn’t quite old enough to be crowned Fire Lord, he becomes enamored by one of his best friends. Sokka is all heart and hope. He’s warm water on cold skin and the comforting lap of the sea to the shore. He’s everything Zuko feels like he can’t have. And yet. 

And yet.

And yet, Zuko forgets everything he’s ever been told. Every dire warning and well intentioned lesson. He steps forward shakily, letting the ache of his wound anchor him to the world and the desires of his heart propel his actions. 

Sokka is beautiful like this. Fuming slightly in his doorway, hair askew and framing the sharp lines of his face. He’s all bare emotions and wide ocean eyes that tell Zuko he’s in for a world of a lecture the second words return to them. It’ll be all “ _you idiot,_ ” and “ _Katara said_ ” and “ _almost died_.” 

There’s a strong hand on his shoulder 

The tide pulls him in. 

Sokka winds that same hand around his neck and he’s pressing his weight into Zuko even though neither of them should be standing. And with a broken leg and a gaping abdomen wound between them, they really are just a shade too vulnerable as they stand clutching at each other in Zuko’s bedroom. 

Zuko releases a tense exhale of breath, one that he’d been cautiously holding.

The ocean pushes him back.

In a cacophony of crimsons and reds and scarlets, he chases the blue of the sea. Stills and doesn’t fight the current. Waits. 

Sokka holds him tighter, pulls his body into a kiss that feels like a dam bursting. 

Finally, Zuko drowns.

When Zuko grows older than Lu Ten had ever been, Sokka takes him to Ember Island and kisses him on the spot where the land meets the sea. They hold hands, let skin press to skin with no intention of parting and Zuko floats comfortably amongst the waves.

“You’re very _pretty_ ,” Sokka says, half-laughing and full of love.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
